These will be quick musings about Psychonauts, the things I have learned about game design since I tried it the first time in 2017, and a strange approach where I differ from the majority.

A lot of people enjoy Psychonauts. Would a majority do if people actually played it? I don't know. I had my good moments with the game - but ultimately the moments where I was tired of this game beat the other ones.

What I liked:

-the consistent creativity in both art and mechanical design. It is genuinely hard to predict where the game will go, and what the next level's theme will be. However, since it is also a source of some of the game's most glaring weaknesses, I'm not sure if I should count it this way

-all the audio. Voice actors are great, the music is great, the sound is very responsive and communicative. Basically no issues there

-most of the humor, albeit some of it falls flat. Psychonauts is heavily a "lulsorandom" game, throwing quick gags in short intervals. Not all of them are funny, and the fact that bacon is a big deal is very 2005, but I definitely laughed when I saw the brainless Dogen.

What I disliked:

-the overt cutscenization of basically every level. There are so many cutscenes, and often in nonsense places (cutscene - me doing a thing for 5 seconds - cutscene). It feels very pulling out of any action. Most of the cutscenes didn't even need to be cutscenes, because they were just 1 person talking for a while

-camera, as some people likely have already written, is completely awful. There was a particular moment in Milla's Dance Party, where you had to make a trick on a slopey wall and the camera suddenly swapped to a high place. Made me repeat the moment like 10 times because I didn't know what the controls were. Another case was the Lungfish fight - I had not only to fight the Lungfish herself, but also make sure that the place my camera is in is not water or else I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING AAAH

-the deep arrowheads minigame. Playing hot and cold, with not fully explained rules, simultaneously threathened by random animals is just... frustrating. I don't mind minigames, some are even fun, but I think that separating the rewards from the main game like that (every arrowhead you get in a level is basically meaningless) while connecting the threat strikes me as... one of the worst ways to make a minigame

-bugs, collision issues, etc. In my 5 hours of playtime for now I got one crash (which is forgivable, the game was made in times when Windows 10 was unheard of) and 3-4 collision issues (which is less forgivable), as well as some graphics errors

-general bullshit, like the fact that the way forward in one place in Lungfishopolis was climbing buildings, and the only way the player could figure that out by themselves was... by realizing the reference, I guess? I figured that out by accident, by jumping randomly and sticking. I feel that the moment I threw my joystick (metaphorically) also counts - pretending to be an assassin in Milkman Conspiracy means you get one shot by a random sniper. How to pass him through? I don't know. Most likely bacon or the internet would have told me, but at this point I don't care enough to ask.

Now, a random musing time: I have noticed that a lot of the "cult classic" games are pretty janky gameplay-wise, to the point where "cult classic" became synonymous to me with "unfun gameplay". Psychonauts is one, but Fallout New Vegas, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, a lot of point'n'clicks (that had totally nonsense puzzles)... Ben Croshaw of Zero/Extra Punctuation makes a similar, but opposite point about Prey. And I'll be honest - that frustrates me. Access to games' judgment as fun, mechanically satisfying works of entertainment, instead of things that are "fascinatingly messy" is automatically harder. Is that wrong? Obviously, not. But still this experience frustrates me as someone who would like to search for games that fit my enjoyment